Silverlight 4: How to use the new Printing API ?

Silverlight 4 now supports printing functionality using the Printing APIs. Using the API’s you can now print your whole application screen or a portion of the application. Also, you can customize the look while you printing your part/full application. In this post I will step you guys to the depth of the printing API.

Prerequisite

Before you start working with the Silverlight 4 printing API, your environment should match the following prerequisite:

   * You are using Windows XP SP2 or higher version of operating system
   * You already installed Visual Studio 2010 RC
   * Latest Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010

If you meet the above prerequisite, we are ready to go to the next step.

Setting up the Silverlight 4 Project

Let us start with a new blank Silverlight application project. Open Visual Studio 2010 and click on File –> New –> Project or just press CTRL + SHIFT + N to open up the new project dialog. Now expand the “Visual C#” section and select “Silverlight”. From the right pane select “Silverlight Application”, chose the location to create the project and give a proper name (here I am using “Silverlight4.PrintingAPI.Demo” as the project name). Click “ok” which will bring up another dialog. Select “Silverlight 4” & hit ok to create the blank Silverlight application.

XAML Design

Visual Studio will automatically create a “MainPage.xaml” for you and display inside your Visual Studio IDE. You can now design your application as per your need. Let us add some contents inside the page:

<Canvas x:Name="cnvContainer">
   <Border BorderBrush="#FFC7851A" BorderThickness="1" Height="118" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="12,26,0,0" Name="border1" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="376" Background="#42F5E0A7" />
   <TextBlock Text="Silverlight 4 Printing API Demo" FontWeight="Bold" HorizontalAlignment="Left" FontSize="20" Margin="26,41,0,225" Width="353" />
   <ProgressBar Height="18" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="26,108,0,0" Name="progressBar1" Value="75" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="353" />
</Canvas>
<Button Content="Print" Height="23" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="166,244,0,0" Name="btnPrint" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="75" Click="btnPrint_Click" />

Here I am adding a “Border”, a “TextBlock” a “ProgressBar” and a “Button” inside the main Grid panel “LayoutRoot” inside the “MainPage.xaml”. We will start our printing job once we click on the button. Hence, added the Click event with the button.

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